Co-op Christmas Program

Thursday, the 17th, was Northland Co-op's Christmas Program. Abbie was part of the big choir but Molly's class sang just right outside her classroom.

Molly was so adorable. She walked out in line with her class and then stopped, turned and then for the rest of the time held onto the chair in front of her.

Of course, she got so excited when she saw me and yelled out "mommy." That always melts my heart when she does that. And she does it almost every time I've been away from her for a little while. She does it when I pick her up at Sunday school, co-op or when I come home. I love it!

The classes then sang "Twinkle, twinkle" and "We wish you a Merry Christmas." She sang only one or two word of each song and I mean whispered not sang. It is so funny to me because at home when she is just playing or singing to the radio, she will sing super loud. But when she sings even just in front of me, it is a whisper that you can barely hear.

I did get a picture of Molly with both of her wonderful teachers. Molly really loves going to class and I am so grateful for both of these women who love on my sweet girl!

Ms. "Mez" as Molly calls her, it's really Tamez, close enough right? Molly will run into class to Mrs. Tamez like she is going to give her a big hug but then usually stops right in front of her like she is shy. It is so funny.

And Molly with Mrs. "Ham" again as Molly calls her. Her name is Mrs. Hale and Molly really does love her but I guess wasn't to sure about taking a picture.

After Molly was done, her and I went over to the auditorium to watch the older kids program. Abbie was hilarious when they were walking to their places, because she would barely walk at all until she found where we were sitting. Once she saw us she yelled out "Mommy, Molly" and then walked quickly to her spot. Then a few minutes later she noticed daddy and got even more excited, it was very sweet.

This was the best picture I could get of her on stage. She is to the left of the boy in the bright green shirt. She did a great job singing and doing the hand motions. The cutest part was when they were supposed to snap in one song. Mrs. Vonk told them if they couldn't snap to just flick your fingers. I didn't notice what anyone else was doing but Abbie was hilarious. It was more like jazz hands and rubbing two fingers together every once in a while. I am just really glad we got video of it!

We did get some pictures of the girls together but once again none with us parents in it. Which always frustrates me. I think that is going to be my new years resolution - to be in at least one picture every month and at big events like this I (and Marty) have to be in one picture:)

The best one of my girls - we are so blessed by our kids!

(even though they can't smile for a picture)

M&K Wedding

Funny Graham comment

This morning when Graham was eating breakfast, he was telling me something and ended it by calling me "little lady." I kind of laughed at his silly name for me and then said to him, "well, at least you called me little" thinking that it was at least sort of nice. Well, his response was "yah, your not big. Big people are tall and skinny!" Nice, thanks for helping me out Graham!

Home Depot Safety Day

Saturday morning all of us went to Home Depot for their Annual "Safety Day." We only knew about it because they postponed there Kid's Workshop this month until then. You are supposed to be 5 to be a part of the kid's workshop but we let Abbie try it out this time. She actually really enjoyed it. Marty said she did great at following the instructions and also at hammering in the nails.

Here Abbie and Graham are getting started:

Abbie intently hammering in some of her nails:

Graham just knows exactly what to do after doing so many of the kid's workshops. I think he has done somewhere around 14 now.

After they finished there firehouse banks and Molly and I got some free popcorn they were handing out, we went and looked inside the firetruck and ambulance. It was the Casselberry Fire Department and they were so nice and showed the kids around the trucks and answered lots of questions.

Abbie, Graham and Molly

All smiles on this cold (yeah!) Saturday morning. It's hard to believe the night before we were wearing shorts to the Fall Festival, it was really chilly especially since this was all in the shade.

Graham just loves to make weird faces for the camera. I don't mind, at least he still let's me take his picture!

The fireman was telling them all about the truck:

and showing them some things inside of it.

It was so nice to have a cold day in Florida. The kids and I played outside for pretty much the whole day. We had to enjoy it while it lasted!

Northland Fall Festival

Friday night we went to Northland's Fall Festival. That afternoon it was sort of rainy and humid so they moved a few moon bounces inside and all the games into the classrooms. It was so nice to not be outside the whole time because it was super humid!

We started out eating some burgers and as Graham said "the best hotdog he'd ever eaten." Then Abbie and Molly had some cotton candy and Graham had a snow cone.

Abbie eating her cotton candy. She ate the whole bag, which wasn't that much, all by herself. Molly wasn't super interested and only ate a little of her cotton candy.

Graham and his snow cone. He had a really loose tooth and had a hard time eating his because it kept moving his tooth around:)

Then after all that junk food, we went and did a little line dancing. Abbie and Molly really tried to follow what he was teaching, and Graham just really wanted to dance to rock music so he mostly just stood there. We got a cute video of the girls trying to dance.

This must have been right at the beginning because Graham is still out on the dance floor.

After the dancing we made our way through lots of different games they had set up in the classrooms. The kids played mini golf, bean bag toss, ring toss, a fun game where you tried to knock the floating balls down and a few others. Then Graham was eating some of his York patty and his tooth bent all the way back and was bleeding a lot! He was really upset because it was bleeding and he said it hurt. He said to me "I can't eat anything tonight. I really want to eat some of my candy." Well, we got his tooth to stop bleeding at least so we could go on the moon bounces and go to the petting zoo. And while we were getting it to stop bleeding someone pointed out that now he will look like a Jack-O-Lantern:)

Abbie bouncing on the moon bounce.

Molly and Abbie jumping. It was nice they had one for 4 and under and one for 5 and up.

Graham petting a duck and Molly loving all the animals!

Molly petting two ducks at once. Graham is petting one also.

They had little sections fenced in where the kids could go in and pet the animals and Abbie wouldn't go in the first one she would only reach in and pet them. We were so proud of her for going in the second one though. Abbie can be pretty fearful of new situations and also of animals so we thought that was a pretty big deal!

Graham kept saying how soft the ducks were, this duck kept running away when you would pet it so he had fun chasing it around a little.

Molly absolutely loves animals but she seems to especially love goats. I know she loved them also when we went to Green Meadows last year.

Molly so happy after all the animals. They also had pony rides but the line was crazy long! When we were waiting in line for the moon bounce outside you could see the ponies going by and Molly just kept running over closer to them saying, "look ponies, ponies Mommy." She sure loves animals.

All of us had a great time at Northland's Fall Festival. Then when we got home Marty pulled out Graham's tooth, the first one that he actually let us pull. He was glad about getting some money for his tooth.

Ace Gymnastics

I am so far behind in my blog, but want to go back and do a few that I missed. Last month, on September 9 Abbie, Molly and I got to go to Ace Gymnastics with our Moms4Moms group. Graham was very disappointed that he didn't get to go. He keeps asking if he can take gymnastics lessons! We will eventually let him take a few we just haven't gotten around to it yet:)

Abbie and Molly had a great time running around the huge gym space. I have so many more pictures but they are mostly of there back:) Ace had a few instructors around the gym and one that was doing different activities as a group. The girls weren't interested in doing the group things pretty much at all. They just wanted to explore and do it on there time, which was fun and lots of others did the same thing.

The girls loved this it is a really long trampoline that goes into the foam pit. They would bounce all the way down it but I never could get them to jump into the foam pit.

Jumping on a big piece of foam!

Abbie really liked the balance beams. They had quite a few at different heights.

Molly had to take a turn then.

There were these huge fans that kept us all cool while we ran around.

The one group activity that Molly did was swing on the rope, she loved it! She had a huge smile on her face while she was swinging and then when she got down yelled, "I did it." She was proud of herself.

Then Molly tried out one of the big balls on the trampoline.

And Abbie rolled this around for a long time.

The other thing the girls really loved were the bars. They loved just hanging on them. They have low ones that they could reach and they just really like swinging themselves and hanging.

Molly was tired out! She never takes naps anymore but I had her rest afterwards and this was how I found her, almost curled into a ball with her feet up on the floor.

Such a fun time we had at Ace Gymnastics, we were so thankful that the Moms4Moms scheduled the playdate. And we found out about an Open House that they had not long after this so Graham got to go also. I have a few pictures from that day that I will post in my catching up:)

Abbie's First Day (and kind of Molly's)

Abbie started her first day of Pre-K on September 2nd. The day before, Tuesday, we had an open house at the school. I only took one picture of Abbie and Molly at the open house. I was a little preoccupied having to go to both of their classrooms by myself because Marty was out of town unexpectedly at a funeral. I also had missed the orientation meeting because we went to see the play Grease so I was getting all the information also. But here is the one picture I took of the girls both doing puzzles in Molly's classroom:

Then on Wednesday, Abbie had her first full day of school. I have to say preschool isn't as exciting to make sure you get a bunch of first day pictures when your kid has been going since she was 2.



After class and after we picked up Graham, we celebrated the first day with ice cream just like we did for Graham's first day. Abbie wanted to make a silly face when I took her picture:

Molly is just messy when she eats ice cream:

And Graham, well, Graham was just being the way he always is for pictures - silly:

Graham wanted to use the camera on my phone so this is the picture he took?! :

Then the next day, Thursday, was Molly's first day of her class. And unfortunately we have absolutely no pictures from that day. Abbie had to have some dental work done and that was the only day available for a while. I was disappointed Abbie missed her second day of school and that I didn't get to take Molly to her first, but it all turned out fine. They are both loving going to school and it is amazing how much Molly tells me about what she did in class - I am loving it!

Oh no...

Yesterday I finally got around to changing Abbie and Molly's "Diamond Castle" Barbie batteries. See this post. Yes, two weeks after they got the Barbies they had played the songs so much that the batteries ran out and yes that was in January. I enjoyed the break for a while and then just never really thought about it until recently, because I found some Alexa and Liana costumes (they are the two Barbies they have from Diamond Castle) for the girls for Halloween.

Well, I am so sad to say that Molly's "Alexa" Barbie still doesn't work all the way!! It only lights up and won't sing the songs. Molly was so excited when she saw the new batteries and then her face was so sad when I told her it still wouldn't work. She looked at me so sadly with huge tears in her eyes. She handled it really well actually but it made me very sad for her. I have to say it made me pretty angry at myself for not changing the batteries when it stopped working. It may have been broken then and we could have either gotten it fixed or bought another. I know it is just a Barbie but the girls absolutely love playing with them. The Barbies dresses are actually starting to kind of fall apart because they have been played with so much over the past 9 months.

I looked on EBay also to see if I could get another one. And I can if I am will to pay $50, um don't think so:( And to make it worse (in my mind at least) they have plenty of the Liana dolls Abbie has for only $20, which is what we paid in the store, and we saw two at Marshall's the other day! Marty says they must have made more of the Liana since she is the blond haired Barbie with a pink dress, funny and true I'm sure. Alexa has brown hair and a purple dress. I guess even little girls prefer blonds to us brunettes, oh well!

So if any of you very few that read this know of anyone who has a "Diamond Castle" singing Alexa Barbie, I would love to buy it - for a reasonable price.

*** And yes at some point I will get around to blogging again. Lately I just haven't been up to it. There are just so many other important things. I guess I thought if I started with a small blog maybe it will get me back in the swing of things. We'll see!

Good Golly Miss Molly

I absolutely love my Molly.  Her laugh is contagious and she knows how to make you laugh also.  Her big brown eyes are beautiful. And she absolutely adores her big brother and sister! So here are a few pictures that show some of the funny and adorable things she does.  

Molly can make you smile by singing you a song.

She can make you laugh by using socks as gloves and then insisting she wears them out to the store!

She can have fun letting her brother slide under her legs while they are dancing.

She can show you how much she adores her siblings by being sad without them while they were playing in the IKEA play area:(

Make you sweat just watching her dress up in her winter coat when it is 90 degrees outside.

And then she can make you say "WHAT?!!!" when she decides to do this:

I thought I had made it through three kids without the drawing on the walls.  I have only had one other minor crayon drawing with Abbie and it was barely anything!  Yes, I gave her the crayon and asked her to take it downstairs and put it away - somehow she heard draw a picture all the way down the stairs and then put it away. 

I have to say I felt a little bad for Molly.  The second she saw me, while she was still coloring, she burst into tears.  She was SO upset.  

So then this was what Molly was doing for a while - using a magic erase sponge.

And in case you are wondering, no we didn't get it all off.  It would have taken probably 2 or 3 sponges and we are planning to paint our staircase anyways, so if you visit soon there will be lovely red crayon drawings displayed!